Measures - How measures get their letters

All measures for elections are due to the Board of Supervisors with a copy to the Registrar of Voters by 88 days before an election. The Registrar of Voters assigns measure letters by the following Monday (E-85) and publishes a notice of the deadlines to submit arguments and rebuttals.

Section 13109 of the CA Elections Code sets forth the order of precedence of state propositions and local measures on the ballot as follows: State, Judicial, School, County, City, and District. The Code allows election officials to vary the order of county, school, city and special districts, but local measures must always follow state propositions, which are numbered.

If a jurisdiction submits multiple measures, they are arranged in the order of their ordinance number. The Jurisdiction can also specify the order in which the measures should appear on the ballot.

When there are multiple jurisdictions on the ballot – for example, several cities, school districts or special districts, the jurisdictions are first arranged in alphabetical order within each type of jurisdiction before the letters are assigned.

When all measures have been arranged according to their jurisdictions and their order within the different types of jurisdictions, the letters are assigned beginning with the letter A and continuing until all of the measures have received a letter. If the number of measures in an election is more than 26 (the letter Z), the letters are doubled for subsequent measures, so that the next measure after Z would receive the letter AA, BB, CC and so on. For each election, the lettering starts over again with the letter A assigned to the first measure on the ballot in that election.

When a jurisdiction covers two or more counties, the Election Official in each county can mutually agree to use the same letter for the measure.

The legislative body may amend or withdraw its measure by filing a resolution stating the specifics concerning the amendment or withdrawal not later than 83 days before an election (CA Elections Code Sec. 9604, 9605). An initiative or referendum measure may be withdrawn by filing a Notice of Withdrawal signed by all proponents. If a measure is withdrawn after the letters have been assigned, the letter which was assigned to that measure will not be used.